Friday, May 9, 2008
From gloating about getting off work to enjoying the "country road" ambience of lower Manhattan to hating on-the-make firemen: A spectrum of improper responses to the terror attacks.
Sep 7, 2002 | Black smoke, orange flames, falling bodies and crashing planes. Our brains are branded with the images of Sept. 11 -- and our public selves are programmed to say the right things about them. But what did we really think when we first confronted this colossal event? What seditious words arose, never to be articulated in polite company? And when the smoke had cleared, replaced by a fog of analysis, grief, patriotism and hero worship, we selected our official opinions with care. What did we really believe? What forbidden thoughts did we keep to ourselves?
The outpouring of expression began just hours after the World Trade Center towers collapsed. One year after the trauma, that flow is cresting with the publication of dozens of books, many of them meant to help put the events and our emotional reactions into perspective. Among the more reflective tomes are those that attempt to act as records of our thoughts, feelings and actions at the time of the tragedy and immediately after. Many of them do an admirable job.
Dean E. Murphy's "September 11: An Oral History," for example, contains dozens of compelling personal stories: everyone from traumatized firemen to heroic survivors to those who rushed to the towers in search of lost relatives is represented, often in searing, literary detail. The fact that each person's story was dictated rather than interpreted by the author testifies to the power of the tragedy -- and, perhaps, to the brilliance of Murphy's interviewing and editing.
But even though Murphy's contribution stands out as one of the more enlightening commemorative books, it doesn't necessarily cover the full range of our response. Like so many of the other books now on shelves -- with titles like "Out of the Blue," "Men of Steel" and "Strong of Heart" -- Murphy's oral history treats 9/11 as a devastating tragedy that led only to pain and sadness, or heroism and bravery. It is not a complete record of our reactions, but rather (as the book jacket claims) "a tribute to the spirit of cooperation and the outpourings of empathy that marked that day for so many people in the United States and abroad."
What Murphy and many other authors miss is the fact that cooperation and empathy were not the only emotions of the day; they were simply the publicly expressed emotions of the day. Many of us didn't just feel sad or angry or proud in the face of the day's horrors -- or when President Bush and the media requested it. We also felt indifferent, confused, selfish, annoyed and, in some cases, even happy or excited. We had thoughts that we couldn't explain or control, thoughts we didn't express, except perhaps in whispered conversations.
A few rebellious thinkers with access to the media actually unleashed their forbidden thoughts, electrifying and infuriating a tender and almost universally righteous public. Some of these blurters issued contrite retractions, a few held firm in the face of public denunciation, sure to earn footnotes in future histories of the events.
All these forbidden thoughts are sometimes painful or mortifying to hear. Many could be accurately described as disgraceful. But they emerged from our mental ether, and they deserve to be part of the record of that day and its aftermath. They are necessary evils to be countenanced in an honest analysis of the time. They keep us from creating a distorted, overly sentimental picture of our national reaction to disaster. And perhaps, as in therapy, these are the most useful thoughts to confront as we attempt to recover from the violence of the day.
We asked friends, colleagues, acquaintances and strangers to share the thoughts about Sept. 11 that they had -- or heard -- and tried to hide. Surely there are many more, and we invite readers to contribute theirs by e-mail to forbidden@salon.com. For now, we offer what we have collected in the past few weeks.
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